Are you asking if the US COULD be better than it is, or if it IS better for the average citizen than many places in the world, including China? The answer is an obvious YES to both.
Competing and yet also colluding? Corporations want to fulfill consumer or shareholder desires in exchange for money. The CCP wants to dominate you and determine your way of life. They want to tell you what you’re allowed to desire. It’s very different.
I would not say that corporations in America are characterized by merely fulfilling consumer desires, rather creating consumer desires—often without precedent—and then fulfilling those desires that were created. As can be seen by the sheer quantity and market size of advertisement (which is the business of manufacturing desire itself).
It appears that we can be encouraged to desire almost anything, or at least an incredible amount of things…
>wants to dominate you and determine your way of life. They want to tell you what you’re allowed to desire.
I'd like to note that corporations do want the same thing. I believe all power structures converge to this, no matter their origins - an abusive partner, a out of control corporation, a totalitarian government, a fanatic cult, law enforcement when given too much power.
So what remains? Forces that keep the system in balance, "checks and balances" as they say. I don't know the recipe and I don't believe anyone does. What I'd just like to point out is that corporations, as they are, are not exempt from abuses of power.
Oligarchies. See the Canadian telecom and CRTC situation. It looks like competition from the outside, but really it's collusion with false attempts at competition.
The result speaks for itself. The desire to dominate is identical, there's just more or less legal or culturally acceptable ways to going about getting there.
You're right, but I half agree with the intention. Sure, one could say HN was built in the US, domiciled in the US - but it's still a tech forum on the global internet. As for whether "most" people on HN are from the US, look I can't really prove or disprove you here, I have no statistics, but I'll say that the US is ~1/4th of the english speaking population (330M/1.3B).
Obviously, I'd guess the demographics of Americans is more than a quarter here, but I (think) there are enough non-Americans that you can't really be certain that the individual you're speaking to is actually American.
Yes it's better, because in America we don't get whisked off in the night to a work camp or straight up killed for simply airing our grievances about government or corporate control. It absolutely sucks that American companies have near total control over our lives here, but at least you and I are free to mention that fact online.
Interesting question. Well, both are now capitalist hells, but very different forms.
Both individualism and collectivism have positive and negative sides. With individualism, the positive is e.g. self-expression, creativity, innovation, while the negative is e.g. selfishness and disconnection. With collectivism, the positives are e.g. connection and supporting others, while the negative is e.g. imitation and lack of diversity. Ironically, when pushed to extremes the negatives of individualism and collectivism seem to kind of equate with each other (though it may not look that way at first glance from the outside).
All this to say that yes I mostly agree with you, though it’s complicated since the pros and cons are often quite different. And I think this is often misunderstood (since people may, for example, for their own more individualist country focus on the positives of individualism while for another more collectivist country focus on the negatives of collectivism—-or vice versa).